Taking Back Textbooks

Taking Back Textbooks

SPRING 2016

PROJECT PACKET

Textbooks Campaign Story

Background:

Just a decade ago, it could be the first day of class you found out the actual cost of the textbook you need to buy. Professors wouldn’t be able to find the price of a book they assigned, even if they wanted to. Publishers only sold the book you needed in costly bundles with CDs and workbooks that you didn’t even need.

The worst part was that you had no choice – there weren’t any other options. The publisher released new editions every couple years, just to make sure you couldn’t borrow your friend’s or older sibling’s book.

The game was rigged, and the publishers were making money hand over fist ripping off students.

Cause:

Textbook prices are high because of a fundamental flaw in the textbook market. In a normal market, consumers can exert control over prices by shopping for better deals, forcing companies to drop prices to compete. In the textbook market, however, no such control exists: the person actually spending the money – the student – isn’t the one who chooses the product – that’s done by the professor. That means that publishers can raise prices without fear of market repercussion, and they have – every year for the past 30 years.

Our History:

That’s why, eleven years ago, the Student PIRGs launched our campaign to make textbooks more affordable.

We joined a select group of visionaries, faculty leaders, and organizations in a quest to tackle an industry rife with deception and practices that prey on students.

At first, we focused on curbing the worst of those practices. We helped pass price disclosure laws and we banned the practice of bundling in unnecessary CDs and workbooks. We pushed the government to launch investigations and studies around the publisher’s tactics – and we helped set up some of the nation’s first used book markets and rental programs.

These are victories – but they’re never going to solve the problem on their own.

See, rentals, used books, and e-textbooks have the potential to save students money in the short term, but they’ll never actually bring the price curve back down because their prices are ultimately determined by the cost of new, printed edition.

They’re all part of the same, broken system.

That’s when we realized: if we’re going to actually ease the burden of high textbook prices, we need to give students a better, low-cost alternative outside of the traditional market. That’s where open textbooks come in.

Our Solution:

Open textbooks are faculty-written and peer-reviewed like traditional textbooks, but they are published under an open license, meaning they are free online, free to download, and affordable in print – usually $10-$40. Beyond that, open textbooks offer the ability for professors to customize and adapt their learning materials in a way that traditional publishing’s ”air-drop” materials can’t.

We’re organizing around the country to get more open textbooks in our classrooms. We’re working with colleges, professors, and other policymakers to displace traditional textbooks with open alternatives to save students money.

What We’ve Accomplished So Far:

In the past few years:

- Published 14 research reports, surveying over 10,000 students

- Helped inspire hundreds of open textbook adoptions

- Inspired 10 campuses to launch their own open textbook programs

- Generated 2,200 news hits around textbook prices

- And had more than 3,000 professors endorse open textbooks

In the last year alone:

- Held 220 sit-down meetings with Top 25 VIPs on campus

- Reached 2 million people through our #textbookbroke campaign

- Collected 350 faculty and administrator endorsements

- Doubled open textbook use at schools with PIRG chapters

This year’s campaign

Here’s the catch: open textbooks don’t have multi-million dollar marketing budgets to get them in front of professors like traditional textbooks do.

The only way we can take back the textbook market and make open textbooks a real competitor to the traditional model is to invest time, training, and resources in encouraging faculty to replace their traditional textbook with an open textbook – and who has more access, more expertise, and more resources than colleges and institutions themselves?

Just look at UMass Amherst: their textbook program has saved students over $1.5 million dollars – in just four years. At Tacoma Community College, just over $800,000 in three years.

Using the open textbooks available right now, today, we could save more than $1 billion in textbook costs – just by replacing ONE traditional textbook for every student, every year.

That’s why we’re asking faculty, librarians, campus administrators and other student leaders to be open textbook champions – to give their campuses a chance to step up and make real concrete changes on behalf of their students.

We’ll be asking them directly, and we’ll be working to create conditions where our champions can succeed.

We have the momentum. Driven by student campaigns, the states of Connecticut and Oregon both passed bipartisan, unanimous legislation to support open textbook adoption this year – joining California and Washington as leaders in textbook affordability. A handful of our campus chapter schools – Rutgers, the Universities of Connecticut, Washington, and Maryland, and community colleges Berkshire and MassBay – are taking the leap as well. They join a growing list from around the country – from University of Illinois to University of Minnesota, Tidewater Community College to Rice University, and Harvard to MIT in stepping up to help make textbooks more affordable.

This is where change is happening. It’s not in Congress, its not sweeping policy change. It’s on the ground, it’s incremental. It’s happening in one classroom at a time, it’s happening one meeting, one table at a time.
SPRING Action Items

Report Release

This fall, our chapters collected nearly 5,000 surveys from students across the country. Topping our goal of 3,000, and more than doubling our previous largest survey, it was a major accomplishment. Now, we’re taking all that data and releasing a report.

Reports like this have generated 100 – 150 media hits per release – in dozens of campus newspapers and in major national papers. More importantly, releasing these reports gives us an opportunity to positively engage with key campus decision-makers: asking them to speak at a release event, adding a quote to our press release, and so on. More materials, including a sample press release, press advisory, and pitch rap, as well as press statements for various stakeholders, will be made available closer to the release. National release of the report is scheduled for FEBRUARY 3rd, 2016.

Top 25 Meetings

Besides the report, the most important tactic for the spring semester is to have sit down meetings with key decision-makers on campus. It is critical for our chapters to maintain strong campus relations, to maximize our impact, protect our long-term existence, and maintain a strong connection to the people we work with every day.

The textbooks campaign provides a vehicle to develop positive relationships with decision-makers: we’re encouraging schools to take advantage of this “hero” opportunity to lower costs for their students. The goal of these meetings is to push our chapter schools to launch their own open textbook pilot programs.

Our goal is 100 for the year, but we’re significantly behind where we want to be, so each campus needs to meet with at least 2 campus VIPs (student gov leaders, department heads, Deans, etc) to discuss textbook affordability. Talking points and other materials for these meetings will be available on the Intranet.

Grassroots Petitioning

To convey the forward momentum of our campaign, we’re moving forward from #textbookbroke (which served it’s purpose well, reaching over 3 million people), we’ll be directly asking decision-makers on campus and on all levels to help #FreeTheTextbook.

It gives us some positive momentum, rather than just highlighting the problem, and gets at both the “market monopoly” aspect of our campaign, and the fact that open textbooks are actually free!

“Hey @University, help us #FreeTheTextbook!”
SAMPLE COORDINATOR ROLES

Media Coordinator – Responsible for getting 3 media hits throughout the semester to increase visibility for the campaign. Will recruit volunteers to help outreach and pitch media for stand up press events as well as do paper releases and follow up to on campus and local news outlets, set up Letter to the Editor writing parties and trainings for groups, schedule meetings with campus media to pitch editorials and interviews.

Events Coordinator – Responsible for organizing fun events on campus to educate students about the problem with publisher textbooks and open source alternatives. Will create props and tabling displays, recruit and train volunteers, and generate grassroots product (e.g., signatures on giant textbook, photo petitions).

Top 25 Coordinator – Responsible for building relationships with campus and community VIPs to increase support and leverage on our campaign. Will outreach and meet with deans, Student Government reps, student leaders, and faculty, and get them to sign-on to our OER campaign, switch to open source materials in their classes and join us at our press events.

Social Media Coordinator – Responsible for increasing our Facebook and twitter accounts and actively following/updating our accounts with textbook photo petitions, other chapter posts related to the Textbook campaign. Also responsible for further developing and driving a social media arch with potential ideas including buzzfeed lists etc. Will network through social media sites to increase our follower and fan base, bottom-line in charge of making sure all of the emails we collect get databased on our email list, and work with other volunteers to help advertise our online presence in creative ways.

Research Intern– Will research who on their specific campus is a key player in making these decisions or who is already working on OERs already. This could start with the librarian, key faculty etc. Researching classes and professors to work with.
What and How to Track

Top 25 Meetings:

Any meeting about textbooks held with a student leader, faculty leader, dean, librarian, administrator, or decision-maker on campus. Our goal is 100 across the country, and we want to be able to follow up with these people to cultivate them over time.

**In Roots, you’ll need to track how many meetings were held each week.

**In Contact Organizer, you’ll need to track:

- The name of the VIP

- The title of the VIP

- Tag it with “textbook meeting”

Media Hits

Press hits are great! We’re aiming to generate 100 media hits from the report release.

**Email the link for any press hits to

**In Contact Organizer, you’ll need to track:

- The name of the writer

- The outlet

- Tag it with “textbook meeting”

Grassroots Petitions:

Petitions are important! This column includes any repeated, individual actions taken – tweets, photo petitions, petitions, etc.

**In Roots, you’ll need to track how many total petitions were gathered.

Faculty Emails

**In Contact Organizer, you’ll need to track:

- The name of the professor

- The title/department

- Any steps the faculty member is taking to help

- Tag it with “textbook meeting”